ABOUT THIS BOOK

Nick Lantz explores the transformative power of tragic and miraculous experiences, through these poems that illuminate near misses of tragedy and transcendence. His gaze is both roving and microscopic—the Challenger explosion, Bigfoot, a love letter written from inside a missile silo, a mother naming and re-naming a family’s short-lived pets, and a plea for post-9/11 redemption. Lantz never lets his subjects or his readers off the hook, plunging head first into worlds that are both eccentric and familiar, alarming and hopeful.

Finalist, Foreword Magazine’s Poetry Book of the Year

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Nick Lantz is a writer and editor in Madison, Wisconsin, and a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is author of We Don’t Know We Don’t Know, winner of the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize.

REVIEWS

“Nick Lantz’s impressive poems are remarkable for their range and the variety of ways they maneuver down the page. . . . This is one of the finest books I’ve read in years.”—Vern Rutsala

“Lantz is a poet of many talents, but perhaps his greatest gift is juxtaposition. . . . We listen, amazed, as in poem after poem these notations we would have thought dissonant in fact harmonize, and then crescendo. That I can’t figure out how he does it just heightens the thrill.”—Joel Brouwer

“Blending pop culture with history, dark humor with philosophy, and lyric intensity with a confident narrative voice, The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors’ House adds up to be far greater than the sum of its parts. The end result is a wise, intelligent book that lingers long after being read, and which further proves that Nick Lantz—despite the lethal irony of his work—is a poet to be believed in.”—Kevin González

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Where You Are, Where You've Been, Where You're Going
Ship of Theseus
The Werewolf Dreams of Love
The Diving Horses
Love Letter from inside the Titan Missile Museum
The Miracle
What the Lathe Wants
U.S. Route 50, Nevada, the Loneliest Road in America
Mother's Intelligent Design
Patterson–Gimlin Film: Frame 352
History of Fire

What Land of Milk and Honey
Portmanterrorism
Misanthropy
Bride Believes Terrorists Kidnapped Missing Groom
Kuzka's Mother
A Coign of Vantage
The Cryptozoologist Chaperones His Daughter's Prom
Judith & Holofernes
The Pinch
The Marian Apparitions
The Cricket in the Basement
The Soul Diva, Past Her Prime, Visits the Holy Land
Challenger
Love Letter from Zion National Park, Utah

Back to Earth Unharmed
Collective
Battle of Alexander at Issus
Conditional
The Year We Blew Up the Whale—Florence, Oregon
Teach a Man to Fish
Trying to Cross the Border, the War Correspondent Is Jailed
The Giant Squid
Arc Welding Lesson
SETI
The Aging Sci-Fi Actor Speaks to Third Graders at the Local Planetarium
The Last Words of Pancho Villa
A Winter of Sitting by the Window

EXCERPT

What can be said about grace that does not diminish it? To play a drunk, the best actors pretend to be sober. The street mime ladles water from his leaky canoe. Of the blind dog and the three-legged rabbit he chases, only one can be lucky tonight. Our cousins race every train to its crossing on principle; it’s no surprise they win. —excerpt from “Conditional” © The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.

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